By REBEKAH DENN, P-I RESTAURANT CRITIC

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, July 29, 2008

A plastic burger press arrived on my desk the other day for product testing, promising rounder, scientifically shaped, more uniformly sized hamburgers.

The gadget never made it to my kitchen counter. My own burger-presses, to steal a line from writer Michael Ruhlman, already work fine at the ends of my arms. I also passed on the chance to try out an updated garlic roaster and a set of wooden "pasta helpers." And when it came time recently for a recipe that required poking holes in eggs, I used pliers to hold a needle steady rather than buy a $2.99 "egg piercer."

Despite that restraint, I've been thinking for months about which gadgets are truly drawer-worthy. The question has been burning up the Web since Ruhlman published his "Elements of Cooking" last year, a precise and lively reference guide that called for avoiding any tool that has only a single use.

His list of tools "no self-respecting chef would be caught dead with" included some denizens of my own funhouse of a kitchen drawer – namely, an egg slicer and a cherry pitter.

In the process, I've learned that one person's absurd frivolity is another's beloved essential.

It isn't the mere existence of an "egg and muffin toaster" that is so striking, as one blog commenter noted, but the fact that it's attracted a posse of adoring fans. More than 350 people have raved about these McMuffin-ers on Amazon.com, Salon.com reviewed it glowingly in December, and there's now a signature Paula Deen version. The potato-scrubbing "tater mitts" mentioned in another gadget post are a featured item at my local Rite-Aid.

I checked in with Amy Pomp Lorette, a longtime manager and buyer at Mrs. Cook's in University Village. It's a store with serious cookware, but it also has fervent fans for all types of gadgets.

What might surprise me about what customers love?

"Poach pods. They're for poaching eggs," Pomp Lorette said.

"It sounds silly, but we have literally had waiting lists when we run out of our supplies. They contain the eggs so you don't have little floaties in the water. They're pretty stick-resistant, so the egg pops out easily."

Also on the people-really-use-them list: "Beater blades," a $39.95 stand mixer attachment that lets cooks mix cake batter without pausing as often to scrape down the bowl. ("We went through the first shipment almost instantly," Pomp Lorette said.) They sell an "amazing" cheese knife made of resin. There's a new and improved strawberry huller produced by Oxo, as well as the updated cherry pitter that now includes a splashguard. (Further blurring the line between "need" and "want," that one sounds like a practical necessity to the friends who harvest backyard cherry trees every year for nonstop pies.)

In Pomp Lorette's own home, "one tool I can't live without is a Microplane grater," she said. (That one does qualify as a good tool, not a single-use gadget, in Ruhlman's book.)

"A garlic press is the other gadget that I find myself using almost on a daily basis. I know that, yeah, you can do that with a chef's knife and a cutting board, but (the press) is so easy, and you don't end up with smelly fingers."

I finally took a hard look around my own kitchen and decided that – as a home cook, not a chef – I could live with my degree of gadgetry. In my house, in the summertime, an ice cream maker is almost as essential as strainers or tongs. I don't use my tortilla press every day, but when I want to make tortillas, there's no substitute. But I have at least managed to hold off on buying a mandoline, knowing the money would be better invested in an updated knife-skills tutorial.

No amount of training, though, would help me better explain to my young son why we can't keep the pretty set of colored corn holders I found at Mrs. Cook's.

"Your hands are already corn holders," I say to his unconvinced face.

At least he did get something out of the deal – a three-piece plastic burger press, and I bet it'll work great for shaping his Play-Doh. It's no longer a single-use item.